Personality Disorders

Views

Personality is a characteristic manner of thinking, feeling, behaving, and relating to self and others.

Personality disoder (PD) vs. oddball/crank

Everyone has personality quirks and peculiarities, but when personality traits are inflexible and maladaptive and cause significant functional impairment or cause subjective distress that they constitute a personality disorder.

Main distinction from diagnosis listed on Axis I: personality disorders must be present by late adolescence or early adulthood.
3 clusters are recognized:

Clinical Pearls

PDs are a combination of prevalent traits and changeable or reactive behaviors; when making a diagnosis, keep in mind, that some of the criteria of a PD may be situational or transient, while other criteria are pervasive and unchanging. AmJPsych 162(5) 2005